Argo

A useful writer’s lesson in how suspense is created. If you separate the true story from the invented fictional overlays you’ll find in one hand a finely crafted collection of reversals, all is lost moments, narrow escapes and races against time that never actually happened (when you see Jimmy Carter in the DVD extras talking about how the unbelievable story is all true, he’s not talking about the movie).

By the way, the movie within the movie wasn’t some preposterously stupid Star Wars rip off like they made out here either. The Argo cover story was based on a failed adaptation of a Hugo award winning novel (Lord of Light) by one of the foremost science fantasy writers of the 60s and 70s (Roger Zelazny) and also had names like Jack Kirby, Ray Bradbury and even Buckminster Fuller attached. Talk about dumbing down!